Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage….
Whether in 1789 or now, an incoming regime riding the storm gets a fleeting moment to try to contain calamity. If it is seen to be straining every muscle to put things right it can, for a while, generate provisional legitimacy.
Act two is trickier. Objectively, economic conditions might be improving, but perceptions are everything and a breathing space gives room for a dangerously alienated public to take stock of the brutal interruption of their rising expectations. What happened to the march of income, the acquisition of property, the truism that the next generation will live better than the last? The full impact of the overthrow of these assumptions sinks in and engenders a sense of grievance that “Someone Else” must have engineered the common misfortune. The stock epithet the French Revolution gave to the financiers who were blamed for disaster was “rich egoists”. Our own plutocrats may not be headed for the tumbrils but the fact that financial catastrophe, with its effect on the “real” economy, came about through obscure transactions designed to do nothing except produce short-term profit aggravates a sense of social betrayal. At this point, damage-control means pillorying the perpetrators: bringing them to book and extracting statements of contrition. This is why the psychological impact of financial regulation is almost as critical as its institutional prophylactics. Those who lobby against it risk jeopardising their own long-term interests. Should governments fail to reassert the integrity of public stewardship, suspicions will emerge that, for all the talk of new beginnings, the perps and new regime are cut from common cloth. Both risk being shredded by popular ire or outbid by more dangerous tribunes of indignation.
“Should governments fail to reassert the integrity of public stewardship, suspicions will emerge that, for all the talk of new beginnings, the perps and new regime are cut from common cloth.”
BINGO!!! The Rs and Ds don’t mean anything anymore. That is why there is a near hysterical reaction to the Tea Party movement that is drawing in Americans from all political leanings and uniting them in a common cause AGAINST the idiots that put us into this position through the politics of ear marks and special interests. The common citizens have been cut off from their supposed representatives by the special interests and lobbyists and the Senators and Congressmen haven’t been listening to the letters and phone calls (for example: Where is the finished border security wall between Mexico and the US? Why do we have a national health care act? etc.) and now the people have woken up to the fact that they were not being listened to by the folks they sent to DC, so they are going to find someone…anyone, that will listen to THEM and act in the best interest of the working men and women of America instead of the best interest of the Chinese or Mexico or [insert corporate lobby here]. The people are already enraged and the dolts in DC don’t have a clue. I used to be a member of the RNC. I am so furious with the Rs right now, they may never get another donation from me again. I will be looking at the candidates with a microscope to see if they have a record of integrity and of LISTENING to the folks that hire them.
We are on the brink of the collapse of our nation (via a currency collapse), engaged in two foreign wars of nation building, have an ecological disaster in the Gulf, and have a 20,000,000 illegal immigrant problem the is getting worse by the thousands every day…and the folks in DC are busy fretting that AZ is enforcing the same law as the Feds have on the books but ignore! Oh, and the investigation into AIG was dropped today…so I guess the $100K parties at taxpayer expense are deemed appropriate by the DC crowd.
Rage? They ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
Wheat and bread prices in France reached their 18th century highs on … 14 July 1789. Inherent economic instability after a century of generally inflationary trends had first manifested in the brief burst of deflationary depression in the early 1780s.
By the time it was over, the 19th century had become one of almost continual deflation, until 1897 when the current inflation began innocently enough, buried in typical statistical noise. We have since inflated by 25x, compared to about 8x in the 18th century, so the instabilities are, if anything, greater than they were in 1789.
We know not yet what will be our generation’s Robspiere, our Napoleon, our Jefferson … but please don’t make the profound mistake of believing they will not come.
Schama is perhaps a bit early, but he’s decidedly on target with his suggestions. [i]Pax Americana[/i] has been a fragile aberration, now under assault from many sides. Should we be unable to hold what we have, the cultural night around the world will be very long and very dark.
Where are the mobs? The late 18th and early 19th centuries were punctuated by rioting mobs. George Rude wrote excellent studies of the social unrest of that period which was proximate to the revolutions and threats of revolution. I just don’t have the same feeling that this is like then.
A key instability is that our democratic instutions have allowed the weak to gain equality with the strong. But now the weak (e.g., the old, the infirm, the untalented) are abusing that equality to ride (booted and spurred, as Jefferson wrote in his last letter) on the backs of those who are strong. This can only last so long.
3. The mobs are waiting in the wings. America’s tradition of peaceful change through the ballot box is still holding for now. Should there not be a decided improvement in the direction of government after the November elections, then I think you’ll begin to see a true rage with some mob action. I personally hope that mob action doesn’t occur simply because I fear this government. I believe that they would not let such a crisis go to waste but would use it to take more control over America – even to declaring Martial Law.
The mobs at the moment in the USA are organized and on the left. Last weekend busloads of them, escorted by DC police, invaded the property of a Bank of America executive. No sign yet of anti-spending mobs; plenty of demonstrations, but no mobs.
“I fear this government.”
And this is America now. This is how far we have fallen. The government of, by, and for the people is now feared by a large part of the population.
Sadly, I confess…me too.